The Exclusion of 'Belle'

The Exclusion of 'Belle'

What the historical adaptation missed - and why it matters.

Eric D.S. Dorman/ June 3, 2014

As dramas (melodramas?) go that prod and poke and preach, you could certainly see worse than Amma Asante's film Belle, which addresses racism, sexism, and classism in 18th century English society—and in so doing, it addresses the racism, sexism, and classism in our own.

The film spurs on some interesting (and frightening) questions: Did I recognize myself in the antagonists? Did I think that Dido was making trouble rather than demanding due justice? Where is the line between working for reconciliation and betraying a self-righteous savior complex?

Image: David Appleby / Fox Searchlight Pictures

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sam Reid in 'Belle'

For these questions alone, Belle may be worth seeing. But as a historical drama? It doesn't hold up—and in this case, that's a true shame.

The filmmakers freely admit the film is speculation—inspired, really, by a painting. And that's fair enough. Sometimes, for the sake of storytelling, filmmakers should reduce or amplify stories in order to tell them (yes, even historical ones).

But there are times when revisions to history are so excessive that they kill the poignancy of a story.

For Belle, this comes in the form of John Davinier. In the film, Davinier is an aspiring lawyer seeking racial justice in a slavery-plagued world. But in reality, he was a gentleman's steward who probably never saw the grand interior of a high court.

Davinier's statements are more French Revolution than English abolitionism. Any shadow of Christian conviction is not only absent from his character and the film as a whole, but—counter to history—it's usurped by sentiments of the transcendent human spirit and common welfare.

Davinier even juxtaposes himself against his father, the vicar in Dido's parish. While the reverend is concerned with religion and the Bible, Davinier is concerned with laws that will actually change people's behavior.

Let's be fair: Plenty of apologists beat the drum of Christian history simply to make noise. And certainly, entire cultures have never had institutionalized slavery and have also never experienced widespread Christian influence. There were plenty of abolitionists in the United States and Europe who were secularists. And plenty of so-called Christians used the Bible to make their case for slavery. So there is no sense in trying to prove that abolition was (or is today) a purely Christian cause.

But in this particular case—the case of the massacre on the slaving ship Zong, which is central to the film—Christianity mattered. It mattered because there really were people who advocated to the powers of England on behalf of the men, women, and children who were murdered aboard the Zong. They existed in real historical time and place.

Their names were Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano.

Image: Wikicommons Media

Granville Sharp

Sharp wrote the first English tract against the slave trade. He not only came down hard against the slavers in what is the film's principal legal matter (whether the Zong's crew had the right to kill and claim insurance money for, as they would have done for cattle, the abducted Africans for lack of water), but he tried (and failed) to have them prosecuted for murder.

Sharp's involvement in abolitionism—he eventually was elected the first chairman of The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade—and other social causes was fired by his intense study of the Christian Scriptures. In fact, when he wasn't fighting for the outcast, the enslaved and the oppressed, he was a Biblical grammarian. There's even a hermeneutical principle named after him—Granville Sharp's Rule—which holds to this day.